Alaska National Park workers say their firings were illegal : NPR

Two weeks ago, Eileen Kramer and her husband James each received termination letters in their email inboxes.

“They were saying we were underperforming, which isn’t true,” Eileen said.

The couple, who live and work in the sprawling 4-million-acre Lake Clark National Park in Alaska, may soon have to vacate the house they’re living in because it is owned by the Park Service.

“It’s more than just losing our job,” James said. “We’re losing our life.”

“We’ve given so much to this place and we’ve created a life here,” explained Eileen, “and that’s being taken away dishonestly.”

The couple has worked in Lake Clark for about 10 years. She’s in logistics, he’s a biological science technician. They were both recently promoted. Those promotions put them into probationary status in their new positions.

The Trump administration has fired tens of thousands of federal workers with “probationary” status, which usually means newer workers, and makes them easier to let go. But those workers still have some rights and protections, and many say the administration has used false pretenses to fire them.

On Thursday, a federal judge in San Francisco sided with the workers in a lawsuit brought by unions and civic organizations. The judge ruled specifically that the Trump administration’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM) exceeded its authority by directing federal agencies to carry out these mass firings. The government had argued it didn’t because each agency made its own decisions. But U.S. District Judge William Alsup, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, said he didn’t believe that.

“Plaintiffs … have mustered a mountain of evidence that points in the other direction, from a broad range of federal agencies,” the judge wrote in his order.

It’s not yet clear exactly how the ruling is going to affect the thousands of workers who were already let go.

“ I got an award in efficiency last year”

A federal agency is allowed to fire a probationary worker for bad performance or conduct.

The OPM sent letter templates to agency officials in its guidance about firing probationary workers, and the administration fired many for poor performance — even though workers like James and Eileen Kramer say that’s a lie.

“They obviously didn’t look at our personnel file because we have evidence showing that we’re great performers and we’ve exceeded expectations and we’ve received performance awards,” James said.

“ I got a regional award specifically in efficiency last year,” Eileen said. “So it’s a little bit ironic to me that I’m being terminated as part of this government efficiency initiative,” referring to the Elon Musk-aligned Department of Government Efficiency.

The Trump administration has maintained that it is simply trying to root out waste, fraud and inefficiency among the federal workforce of 2.3 million people.

But the lawsuit filed in federal court in San Francisco on behalf of thousands of federal workers claimed that the only fraud here is being committed by the administration.

“[The Trump administration] in one fell swoop has perpetrated one of the most massive employment frauds in the history of this country, telling tens of thousands of workers that they are being fired for performance reasons, when they most certainly were not,” the lawsuit stated.

The White House hasn’t responded to that specific accusation of fraud, but the government had said in a court filing that the “probationary period is part of the hiring process; agencies are not required to hire every employee whose performance is ‘satisfactory.’ “

In his order, Judge Alsup agreed that the firings were not in fact based on performance: “It is unlikely, if not impossible, that the agencies themselves had the time to conduct actual performance reviews of the thousands terminated in such a short span of time. … It is even less plausible that OPM alone managed to do so.”

Michelle Bercovici is a lawyer working on another legal effort to help probationary federal workers who were let go.

 ”They had good performance, a good relationship with their supervisor, and were terminated using the same letter,” Bercovici said. “This is an attempt to circumvent various procedures, policies or requirements designed to protect employees.”

Bercovici has petitioned a federal watchdog entity, the Office of Special Counsel, and managed to secure a stay forcing the rehiring of a small initial group of six federal workers. Working with the nonprofit Democracy Forward, she is hoping to expand the stay to reach thousands of other federal workers.

“We are trying to advocate for as broad a stay as possible,” Bercovici said.

Bercovici says if a government agency wants to do a mass layoff, that’s known as a “reduction in force” and there are rules that need to be followed.

“ It’s a fair, clearly laid-out process,” she said. “It requires a lot of planning.”

Eileen and James Kramer in 2019 by a National Park Service airplane after an aerial telemetry mission tracking radio collared caribou to estimate population.

Eileen and James Kramer

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Eileen and James Kramer

At the National Park in Alaska, Eileen and James Kramer said there was no apparent planning behind the layoffs there. They said half the staff who live onsite at the park were fired, including a 20-year veteran employee at the park who they say was the one person who knew how to keep all the boats, heaters, trucks, snowmobiles and all sorts of other equipment running.

Since he recently became a supervisor they say he was in probationary status too.

“He’s also emergency response, he’s a boat captain,  he’s the one that’s gonna come rescue you if you get in trouble in the backcountry,” Eileen said.

James added: “The superintendent even said, ‘You can fire me, the park will still run without me, but without Warren, we can’t do anything.’ “

The couple said none of these firings appeared to have anything to do with waste or inefficiency.

They say their former supervisors haven’t yet been told by the National Park Service if the ruling in federal court will result in them being reinstated to their old jobs.

“But we are heading into the weekend with somewhat lighter hearts,” Eileen said.

Have information you want to share about ongoing changes across the federal government? NPR’s Chris Arnold can be reached at carnold@npr.org or contacted through encrypted communications on Signal at ChrisArnold.07.